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My son (12) just started Res2Ref. He has some mild learning issues which include, but are not limited to, working memory. Written Narrations have always been a struggle. Through most all of CTC, I outlined the history readings for him, and he worked from the outline and his memory to write his narrations. At the end of CTC (knowing he was about to start Res2Ref), I stopped the outlines, and he did it on his own. He did well with it, but it was just a chapter or 2 of the Bible at that point.

Today was his first written narration for history in Res2Ref. I turned him loose with it, and he had a TOTAL melt down. Tears galore. I don't want him discouraged. He has an extremely bright sister, and he is always so down on himself because he feels he doesn't "measure up" academically.

I have a feeling it was because the passage on Constantine was so much longer than what he was used to in CTC.

Thoughts?

Here is a thread regarding narrations viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16096&p=113130&hili ... nn#p113112 I think Lynn had some good insights.

Do you let him take notes while he reads? My son also has some memory issues if the readings are too long. He takes very brief notes while he reads and then uses those notes to write his narrations. Some other things we did back then was I told him to focus on just one part of the reading that he found interesting. Sometimes that was only a few paragraphs out of the entire reading or one event that happened. That is ok to do, even according to Charlotte Mason. Once he gets comfortable with narrating on his favorite part then you can push him to include more of the story in his narration. The most important thing for him to know is that he doesn't have to include everything. I wonder if since you outlined it all for him that he thinks he does have to remember the entire reading and narrate on all of that. That would have completely overwhelmed my son at that point also. Even now as a highschooler he doesn't narrate on every detail that is contained in a reading. He picks out what he thinks is most interesting or important.

Very good point, Lynn. I think Maybe he does think he has to narrate it all.